I’m A Tramp

Yes it’s true.

See these fingerless gloves hovering in front of you? Well, could spare some change for a cup ‘o tea, please? I promise not to spend it all on meth. Honest, guv. Cough cough.

Well OK. So I’m not quite begging on the street just yet, nor selling my body for the price of a burger but I do have a confession to make that may see me part of the way there in the eyes of some of you.

Ahem. I’ve been wearing the same trousers to work for the last... ooh, 4 weeks at least.

I’m sure people must have noticed. I mean, they have a white paint mark on the thigh that is pretty hard to miss and is quite distinctive.

I’d like to point out at this point that they have been and do get washed regularly (but the paint mark on them is permanent).

How has this come to pass? I mean, having one pair of shoes is understandable in a man but only one pair of trousers?

It wasn’t always like this. My wife, God bless her, regularly restocks my wardrobe (er... for “wardrobe” read “drawer”) at Christmas and my birthday with fashionable items that, to be honest, I’d never think about buying for myself because I just don’t think about that sort of thing. Usually these items of apparel last me a good 18 months or so and I have never, until now, found myself short of trouserage.

But somehow, this year, I’ve gone through more trousers than Paris Hilton.

It’s the keys that do it, you see. The keys of responsibility. I have to carry more keys around with me at work than a screw at Strangeways. A great fob of metal that, if ever used in combat, would be as lethally effective as a spike encrusted mace. Open a door or open a hoody’s skull... it’s all the same to me.

But the average pocket of the average pair of trousers just cannot take the sheer volume of iron that is hammocked within them. I’ve tried to alleviate the tonnage by suspending my fob from a leather lanyard that I bought in Wales. But it’s no good. The keys chafe. The keys wear and tear the delicate fabric of my inner lining. They eat it away completely within a matter of mere months until the trousers themselves are beyond repair.

I’ve got through 2 pairs already this year. And now I’m down to my last.

Unfortunately a poor church mouse such as myself cannot just go out willy-nilly and buy a pair of trousers off the shelf without there being a big household budgetary knock-on effect. Trousers or food? Trousers or food? Which would you choose?

Which is why I must thank a fellow blogger for coming to my aid.

The Dotterel over at Bringing Up Charlie recently ran a prize draw. And yours truly was fortunate enough to be one of the winners. I received a £25 voucher for Marks & Spencer as my bounty. It was timely indeed.

Dotterel, thank you. I am going to M&S later today to get myself covered up appropriately.

The trousers, when I get them, will be completely on you.

Er... well, not quite, but you know what I mean...

Trouser Arouser?

I must admit to being a little nonplussed by the new Subway advert that has hit UK television recently.

It features a young man walking down the High Street, minding his own business when, passing by a Subway “restaurant”, something rather bulbous and bulging erupts upwards out of his trousers and drags him closer to the Subway establishment like a magnet attracting a poker.

I confess I had to do a double take.

Turns out this animated trouser monster wasn’t his Geronimo at all but in fact his trouser pocket turned inside out and exposed to the air in its eagerness to drag the trouser wearer into the Subway premises.

See, such is the excellent value of their wares your own pockets will apparently beg, push and cajole you into spending some of your hard earnt moolah on one of their Meatball Marinara Subs.

Yeah right.

Surely the ad producers must have clocked that the poor guy merely looks like he is getting a great stonking erection at the thought of wrapping his tongue around a Subway Chicken & Bacon batch?

Well of course they did. Sex sells after all.

But I can’t think of anything less sexy than a Subway “restaurant”. It just doesn’t appeal. And mixing their corporate image with bulging erections just turns me off even more.

Urgh!

Hold the mayo?

You’re damned right.

I think I’ll just stick with my usual fish supper...

(Sorry...!)

;-)

Costumes

Because it’s Children In Need day today we’ve had to send our two boys off into the world dressed for the stage.

The youngest, Tom, has had to go to nursery dressed as a pirate. This has meant attiring him in a stripy top, a sword belt, a little waistcoat and some trousers that have been theatrically shredded at the bottom to give him that “Mutiny On The Bounty” look.

He looks frighteningly like Mr Smee from Walt Disney’s Peter Pan.

The costume has been finished off with a little foam hook that he can wave around. It’s very blunt and soft and I suspect the only danger to life and limb will be a transference of snot from Tom’s extremely runny nose to the face of whoever gets too close to him.

I wish I was clever enough to make a joke about Mutiny On The Bogey but I’m not so I won’t.

Our eldest, Ben, has in his own opinion been rather short changed in the dressing up stakes. His school, for some possibly pacific reason, has demanded that the children attend today dressed as “dancers”.

Hmm. It’s not an idea to inspire a rough-and-tumble 7 year old.

Ben spent the entire journey to school this morning eyeing up Tom’s hook with unmasked envy and I must admit I feel a little sympathy towards him (although I expressed this by making sundry jokes about ballet tutus and suggesting that he tell his mates that he’s come to school today dressed as Wayne Sleep). While it’s laudable that the school are promoting the idea of non aggressive interaction and trans-gender activities I can’t help feeling that most of the kids – boy and girl – would have been far happier with a “Kings and Queens” theme, say, or a monsters theme or, yes, even pirates. And if some of the girls wanted to dress as a King rather than a Queen and some of the boys wanted to be a princess for the day I’m sure it would have been fine.

But at the end of the day you can’t stop boys being boys and girls being girls.

Ben owns a fine collection of toy swords but even if Karen and I hadn’t tooled him up with the best that Toys R Us had to offer I guarantee he would have gone out on a walk and found himself a stick or a branch and fashioned his own. My motto is: better a cheaply manufactured foam sword than a piece of lead pipe lifted off a building site. Especially when you’re on the receiving end.

But back to the “dancers” theme. I can only assume that someone at Ben’s school is a fan of Strictly Come Dancing and I now feel that we’ve regrettably missed a great trick:

With the addition of a grey wig, some wobbly jowls and a paunch made of several sofa cushions Ben could have gone dressed as John Sergeant.

I’m sure that would have made him feel a lot better.

To Cap It All

The discussion turned to hat wear in the office today. I’m not sure why but it sure beat the usual chatter of who’s nobbing who and sundry plots to bring down the management (P.S. thanks for reading, dear work colleagues).

I don’t wear a hat but like most non-hat-wearers I’d secretly like to.

Or rather I’d like to have the style and panache to get away with wearing a hat without looking like a complete dick.

Over the years I’ve tried several in my vain attempts to find some skull-wear that actually suits me: panamas, trilbies, the ubiquitous baseball cap, even at one time a Goth cowboy hat courtesy of a brief dalliance with The Field Of The Nephilim.

And I’ve looked an idiot in all of them.

Of course it may be that I look an idiot out of them too but nevertheless I have persevered faithfully in my search.

Until finally, last year, during a wet week in Wales, I came at last across my bonnet paramour in a tacky climbing / souvenir shop in Betws-y-Coed.

The good old fashioned Great British cloth-cap.

I think Karen was as stunned as I was. My God. Here it is. A hat that actually suits me.

I didn’t buy it.

Why?

I have a penchant for wearing proper waterproof hill-walking jackets having given up on the efficacy of umbrellas years ago (they’re just mini money pits). Couple such a jacket with such a hat and you have...

...Foggy from Last Of The Summer Wine.

Need I say more? I may not have much choice when it comes to fashionable head gear but credit me with some sartorial sense.

Blokes

Whilst sitting pleasantly comatosed in front of the TV last night one of those shiny happy femininely positive fashion shows came on and neither Karen nor I had the gumption or the energy to reach for the remote. This particular one was called Twiggy’s Frock Swap and was basically just a televised version of that newest of trends to hit the UK’s Bingo halls and beauty parlours... the clothes swap party.

Premise: get a group of glamorous ladies of assorted ages and sizes together in a warehouse with cartloads of their old clothes and cast-offs and let them swap their clothes in a vaguely entertaining fashion conscious eco-friendly way. The clarion calls runs along the lines of: ladies of Britain recycle your clothes don’t bin them (or send them to starving children in Africa) – it’ll save you money if not wardrobe space!

It was slightly more interesting than the cushion whose soft woolly surface my face was half submerged into.

But while I listened to the glorious voice of Lauren Laverne wash over me like a warm Geordie breeze I had the thought: why don’t they make programmes like this for men?

And the answer hit me almost straight away.

Picture the scene: Gok Wan cakewalks around a group of Weatherspoon’s throw-outs in his high heeled diamante winkle pickers.

“C’mon guys let’s get swapping those g-strings and string vests! Woohoo!”

One shambolic hoody steps forward offering up a pair of torn and faded baggy-arsed Levi’s. “Er. Yeah. I got these to swap.”

Some nerdy looking sci-fi junkie steps hesitantly forward. “Yeah. Cool. Er... I’ll give you a couple of Playstation games for them if you want... Grand Theft Auto and Halo...” He shrugs noncommittally.

Hoody, nodding Noel Gallagher style: “Yeah nice one. Done mate.”

Goods are exchanged. Silence reigns. The men nod mutely among themselves and fidget uncomfortably before the camera.

In the background Gok tears out his hair in long thin oily strips and collapses sobbing to the floor – obviously overcome with the intensely broiling testosterone. The producers meanwhile tear up the series' contract and head out to the pub.

Blokes, you see, we’d just be too damned sensible to be entertaining.

The Kilt

A conversation at work this morning has got me thinking about the kilt (which apparently is the correct plural of kilt not kilts).

Being part Scottish I feel that I have the right to wear one. In fact I’m pretty sure there’s a Blake tartan draped over a shop window display in Aviemore even as I type.

But I’ve never actually got round to donning one.

I mean, it’s pretty hard to find an appropriate occasion when you’re living and working in the English Midlands.

The perfect opportunity arose back in 1976 (or thereabouts) when my Auntie Josie married my Uncle Tam in Glasgow and all the men wore the kilt to the ceremony and the reception. I had the chance to experience the swirl of my own bagpipes amongst the impressive company of my whisky drinking peers... but alas being 7 years old and brought up a Sassenach I bottled it and stuck to ma troosers.

Now, some years later, I regret that youthful decision as opportunities to wrap up my nether regions in a nice rough bit of tartan are as scarce on the ground as tax rebates from Gordon Brown (Broon).

But maybe I should just think ‘outside the sporran’ and get a kilt to sate my own personal sense of satisfaction and actively engineer occasions to wear it? A work’s do? My mother’s birthday? Christmas? My son’s parent’s evening at school? All viable occasions I’m sure you’ll agree.

Life is too short to wait. Sometimes you’ve just got to give things a bit of a prod.

So. My questions are thus: is there an item of national dress (yours or another nation’s) that you’ve always had a secret hankering to wear? What is it and have you ever?

John Wayne Is Big Leggy

I’m wearing corduroys today and as a consequence I sound like I have a small, hungry puppy strapped into the gusset every time I walk.

Yip yip yip yip yip...

Add a bit of tinder and I could start a forest fire.

To make it worse we are having a quiet day at work so the slightest noise is amplified a hundred times. I can sense people’s heads turning each time I cross and uncross my legs.

To combat this unwanted attention I have begun walking with my legs slightly further apart than is natural. I look like a cowboy who’s lost his chaps. A troupe of circus dwarves could ride a monkey bike – in formation and carrying flaming brands – between my legs without even touching the sides.

My kneecaps are protesting and it’s very bad for my posture. Plus I’m going to be hauled over the coals for sexual harassment if I’m not careful.

Tomorrow I will be wearing jeans.